The Leaders
Political ephemera competes with paper clips, pens and old keys in my junk drawer. The campaign buttons, bumper stickers and the pair of peanut-shaped cufflinks from President Carter’s campaign remind me of the political significance of my zip code. In New Hampshire, you can’t avoid politics any more than you can avoid Christmas in December.
On May Day, the Blueprint for Freedom traveled 150 feet from my mailbox to my SUV to my trash can. The Republicans are here. The campaign for president is underway, and ours is the land of the first-in-the-nation primary. Early in the campaign season, the event settings are almost always intimate, which sometimes makes me forget that I’m helping to choose the leader of the free world. You can pose your questions, shake the hands, take your pictures and leave with swag.
I spent one afternoon at the Milford farm of Executive Councilor Dave Wheeler. He’s one of five watchdogs of our state’s treasury. He has a stunning view from a hilltop where he grows Christmas trees and produces maple syrup. On the June weekend when we were there, he hosted a Flag Day picnic and clay target shoot that ended with two presidential stump speeches.
After the gunfire ended and the rain started, we listened to North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Burgum inherited farmland after graduating from college, mortgaged the land and invested the money into a software company that he eventually sold to Microsoft for $1.1 billion. He spoke of increasing energy production and independence, and he struck me as a decent guy whose politics is fairly middle-of-the-road.
Just as the rain ended, a Brahmin appeared. Vivek Ramaswamy is the young culture warrior, biotech entrepreneur and lawyer whose net worth is north of $630 million. Wearing a white TRUTH hat, he pledged to pardon Trump, if necessary, and he proclaimed that he’s fed up to his high forehead with “wokeism.” To my disappointment, his rapper alter-ego Da Vek, didn’t break out in song.
My daughter and I drove to a Hollis winery one evening to see former U.S. Ambassador and Governor Nikki Haley, but we were turned back at the entrance. The event was canceled at the last minute because she was stuck in Washington. I wasn’t interested in driving to Manchester and paying $100 to see her the following night, even though BBQ and a cigar and scotch tasting were on the menu.
In our northern-most county, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has so much name recognition that he doesn’t need to recite his resume, spoke last month at PorcFest. It’s an annual libertarian gathering that numbers in the thousands. Their mascot is a porcupine, and the week-long event was punctuated by conspiracy theories, weed, guns, nudity and dogs. Needless to say, the Republican Party is less than thrilled with their presence.
Former President Trump has been here more times than I can count. Earlier this year, CNN showered him with a channel of free advertising, a friendly audience and his own town hall at the college up the road. I wasn’t in the audience that night, but I did bring my daughter to hear him speak at a rally a few months before he was elected.
Trump, of course, is the populist who gesticulates about his business acumen with one hand and decorates like Louis XIV with the other. He never was a lawyer or a governor nor a military officer. He transcends knowledge. As the wise, old jew Lewis Black says, “He is the first president ever elected, ever, who just ‘knows stuff’.”
At the Trump rally, the masses stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the indoor tennis court at my local gym while he insulted the network of journalists who were positioned on a platform on the opposite side of the court. At least we can take pride in the fact that the Pickleballers haven’t co-opted the court. Yet.
The mood matched the venue. A young Trump look-a-like with a yellow wig worked the crowd. Words rallied over my head like errant Wilson balls, acutely aware of the cameras on the other end. Trump’s ball girl, Ann Coulter, was one of the opening acts. She got a few laughs out of me. I’ll give her that.
Not long after the Trump rally, on another tennis court at my gym, I listened to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren during a more subdued event. A key element of her campaign was the selfie line. So I got in line and posed with my fellow Oklahoman.
Since I’ve been following presidential politics, I’ve seen most of the candidates, either at their rallies or in the parades staged in the center of my town. In 2003, U.S. Senator John Kerry walked in our parade and clutched my 6-month-old daughter as she crumpled a flag. Fortunately, for him, I had just replaced her dirty diaper.
As fortune would have it, I didn’t make a fool of myself that day in Amherst, unlike the time in Merrimack when U.S. Senate hopeful Scott Brown walked toward my turned back and said, “Hey, young woman!” Swimming in sweat, I whipped my head around with the force of a 7-year-old who had just heard the jingle of an ice cream truck. “No, her,” the charming carpetbagger said, pointing to my daughter as the two of us caught our breath after crossing the finish line following a YMCA sprint triathlon.
For the younger generation reading along, this is a guy who long ago secured many a woman’s vote in perpetuity when he invented political thirst trapping after beating more than 7,000 men to become Cosmopolitan magazine’s first centerfold. This is also a guy whose modeling comp card proclaimed “excellent hands”.
The day of the triathlon, the man from Massachusetts simply wanted to tell my daughter how impressed he was that such a young person had competed. Further deflating my ego, I checked the race results and discovered that I didn’t even beat my daughter in the cycling event.
Speaking of men whose hair is never out of place . . . one winter weekend, in a previous election cycle, my husband I and were walking toward our favorite breakfast spot in nearby Milford. I had only rolled out of bed a few minutes before we hopped in the car. My hair was a tangled mess. A line of dried drool marked one side of my face, and deep wrinkles from a night of sleep marked the other cheek.
A few doors down, the man who owns a mansion along our state’s largest lake was leaving a barber shop, his handsome helmet hair freshly styled. Mitt Romney had just finished shooting a political commercial that would eventually interrupt my TV shows. Romney walked outside the barber shop, and there we were. Romney’s Spidey sense is finding you when you most hope you won’t be found. Needless to say, there is no photographic evidence of this story.
The Fourth of July parade in my colonial-era town was teeming with presidential candidates again this year, but I was on vacation in Tulsa, so here’s a shot of me high-fiving Uncle Sam four years ago.
I’m not here to tell you how to vote, but if you want to look like a candidate, here’s my interview with the makeup artist who, over the past three decades of election cycles, has touched every candidate’s face and doesn’t have an unkind word for any of them.